Trouble in the Bay The New World of SwapTech chapter 7 by deleted_user

Brent stared at Marcus Dawson and felt a bizarre, unwanted kinship. This wasn’t a teammate or a friend. It was his professional nemesis. And now they were bound together by the most intimate, horrifying shared experience imaginable.

“You’re right,” Brent said, his voice still strange in his own ears. He bent down, his movements more fluid and less powerful than he was used to, and pulled up his compression shorts and boxer briefs. They felt even more absurd now, a loose, baggy mess around his hips and thighs, the front pouch sagging with a haunting emptiness. He yanked the oversized 49ers sweatshirt back on, the fabric swallowing his new, narrower frame. He looked like a kid playing dress-up in her father’s clothes.

Dawson watched him, her arms crossed under her impressive bust, making the floral dress strain even more. “You look ridiculous,” she stated, no malice in it, just a blunt assessment of fact.

“You don’t look much better,” Brent shot back, the old rivalry flickering to life for a second.

A ghost of a smirk touched Dawson’s lips. “Touché. Now move your pretty ass. My car’s out back.”

They moved through the silent gym. Every weight rack, every barbell, was a monument to what they had lost.

Dawson led him to a service exit in the back, avoiding the main lot. Outside, in a narrow alley, sat a hulking black Cadillac Escalade. It was exactly the kind of car Brent would have pictured Dawson driving. Obnoxiously large, aggressively masculine. Ironically, as Dawson noted, it was his wife's car.

Dawson hit the key fob. The lights flashed. “Get in.”

Brent pulled open the passenger door and hauled himself up into the plush leather seat. The action required a different set of muscles, a shift of his hips. He fumbled for the seatbelt, the clasp feeling unfamiliar in his smaller hands.

Dawson settled into the driver’s seat with a grunt, the dress riding up her powerful thighs. She gripped the massive steering wheel, her scarred knuckles pale. The engine roared to life, a deep, guttural sound that vibrated through the cabin. It was a sound of power, a sound they both understood.

“Where are we going?” Brent asked as she pulled out of the alley.

“Away from here,” Dawson muttered, her eyes fixed on the road. “Then we figure it out.”

The streets, which had been empty when Brent drove in, were now beginning to show signs of life. Or, more accurately, signs of chaos. They saw a car stopped haphazardly in the middle of an intersection, its driver’s door open. A woman in a business suit that was now comically large was standing beside it, staring at her own hands in utter disbelief.

Further on, two women were arguing on a sidewalk, their voices high and sharp. One of them, a tall blonde with a swimmer’s build, made a frustrated, punching motion into the air that was pure, unadulterated masculine fury.

“Holy shit,” Brent whispered, his face pressed against the window. “It’s not just us.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Dawson said dryly, but her grip on the wheel tightened.

She reached out a thick finger and stabbed the power button on the car’s expensive stereo system.

“—reports are still coming in, but we are receiving widespread accounts of a… a mass event,” a news anchor was saying, his voice strained, trying to maintain professionalism in the face of the impossible. He was still a "him," so he must be broadcasting from somewhere else. “Callers from across Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and surrounding areas are describing… well, they’re describing a sudden… physical transformation.”

Brent and Dawson looked at each other. A cold dread settled in Brent’s stomach.

“We’re going to go to our field reporter, Chloe, who is live in downtown Palo Alto. Chloe, what are you seeing?”

A younger, more frantic female voice came on. “Ken, it’s… it’s bedlam down here. There’s… there are women everywhere, but they’re… they’re acting confused, disoriented. Many are in ill-fitting men’s clothing. I’ve… I’ve spoken to several who insist they were men just minutes ago. They’re describing a bright flash of light and then… this.”

The reporter’s voice cracked. “The police are urging everyone to stay indoors, but it’s… Ken, I’ve never seen anything like this. I just watched a woman who claims she was a construction foreman try to lift a parking meter out of the ground. She couldn’t do it. She started crying.”

Dawson let out a low whistle. “A construction foreman. Jesus.”

“Authorities are beginning to cordon off the area,” the anchor continued, his voice grave. “The epicenter of this… event… appears to be the Swaptyx Corporation’s central research laboratories. We have no official statement from Swaptyx yet, but a perimeter has been established around their campus. We are advising all citizens within a… a twenty-mile radius to shelter in place and await further instructions.”

“Swaptyx,” Brent said, the name landing like a hammer blow. The bio-tech giant. Their labs were a few miles from here. They made all sorts of crazy cutting-edge stuff. Gene therapy. Advanced prosthetics. He’d seen their ads.

“Those fucking mad scientists,” Dawson snarled, pounding a fist on the steering wheel. The horn gave a short, angry blast, making a group of confused-looking women on the sidewalk jump. “I knew it. I fucking knew it. This has ‘rogue experiment’ written all over it.”

They drove on, the radio painting a picture of a city in the throes of a silent, gender-bent revolution. The streets were becoming a gallery of surreal images. A woman weeping on a bus bench. A group of three women in gym shorts and tank tops, all with powerfully built legs and shoulders, standing around a lifted truck, arguing about how to check the engine.

They passed a sports bar, its windows still dark. Huddled outside were a group of stunningly beautiful women. They were all dressed in identical, oversized football jerseys. Brent recognized them. The Raiders. The whole fucking offensive line, now a squad of supermodels wearing their own jerseys like dresses, looking lost and terrified.

“Pull over,” Brent said, his voice tight.

“What? Why?”

“Just pull over!”

Dawson swore but swerved the massive SUV to the curb. Brent shoved the door open and leaned out, his stomach heaving. He dry-heaved onto the pavement, his body convulsing. Nothing came up but acid and horror. The scale of it was too much. It wasn’t a personal curse. It was a plague.

He slumped back into his seat, sweating, his new, softer body trembling with adrenaline and shock.

Dawson didn’t mock him. She just stared ahead, her jaw clenched. “Twenty-mile radius,” she repeated quietly. “That’s… that’s the whole goddamn Bay Area. The tech guys. The finance bros. The dock workers. The entire Niners and Raiders roster.” She let out a hollow laugh. “The league is fucked.”

The reality of it settled over them like ash. This wasn’t just their story. It was everyone’s.